28.1.09

Deep Sea Divers II

Diving Into the Russian PsycheBy Jessica DawsonSpecial to The Washington PostThursday, March 15, 2001; Page C05
When communism fell back in 1991, Russian artists lost their favoritetarget -- and the central focus of their work. These days, confronted witha squishy democracy, artists are turning out personal, narrative works --stuff that would have been squashed by the old regime."Now that the Soviet Union is over, artists are trying to recapture asense of what it means to be Russian," explains area printmaker DennisO'Neil. He should know -- for the last decade, he's presided over RussianAmerican artist exchanges through the Moscow Studio project and, morerecently, his Hand Print Workshop International in Alexandria. Manyartists, he says, have responded by "inventing personal mythologies."You'd be hard-pressed to find a better -- or more literal -- example ofthe recent fixation on legend than the drawings of Moscow artist LeonidTishkov. For more than 10 years, the 47-year-old artist has drawn scenesfrom the lives of his kooky vodolazes (deep-sea divers) -- over and overagain. Although many of his drawings and screen prints speak toparticulars of the Russian psyche, his show "Vodolazes," on view now atthe District of Columbia Arts Center in Adams-Morgan, isn't just a coursein cultural anthropology. Many illustrate psychic conundrums most everyonewill find familiar.Why the single-minded devotion to soggy heroes? "I use to explaindifferent social and psychological problems," Tishkov tells me infragmented English. "For me, deep-sea diver is a form of language. Thepictures are like parables, or poems."Call them odes to discomfort. These divers aren't suited up in the latestLycra freedom fabric; their outfits haven't been high tech since JulesVerne published "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." These are bulky divingsuits capped by bulbous metal helmets punctuated by tiny glass faceplatesand oxygen tubes that trail off beyond the drawing's frame like somecosmic umbilical cord. According to Tishkov's lore, vodolazes are thedelicate subconscious requiring shelter from psychic pain; their suitsprotect them from the hostile environment of daily living.Sounds like the stuff of frothy soap operas. Thankfully, Tishkov's surrealhumor takes the edge off the melodrama. In the 40-odd India ink drawingsin this show, he's put his divers in all sorts of wacky situations -- someabsurd, where stick-straight vodolazes float through the air like autumnleaves; others show them acting like watery gremlins, goofing off insomeone's bathtub. Like his hero, macabre cartoonist Charles Addams,Tishkov has created his own breed of mostly harmless -- but undeniablyweird -- monsters. And like Addams, his style is illustrative, too --characters are outlined and filled in with washes of gray and occasionalsplashes of color. The drawings are then captioned in Russian in Tishkov'sshaky script, and translated to English below in neat gray type. Theprints, presented on DCAC's walls in groups of 12 or 15, could be a suiteof New Yorker cartoons.These drawings may look like comics, but they act like shrinks. Printssuch as "He thinks that he's walking along an endless seabed," in which avodolaz sleepwalks across a rocky countryside with his head stuck in afish tank, point out prickly psychic conundrums. It's a vision ofsingle-mindedness, that, according to the artist, is a particularlyRussian predilection.For the most part, Russia's woes are the same as most everyone's. "Russianand American looks different only on the outside," Tishkov says. Theartist knows this much from experience -- he went to medical school beforebecoming an artist. Although he quickly traded scalpel for paintbrush, heleft medicine figuring that if the innards are the same, so is the psyche.Those bulky wet suits are just window dressing, he says. "When open windowfor deep-sea diver, it's the same."Despite Tishkov's pluralist intentions, a number of his drawings end uplost in translation. Even with the artist as cultural tour guide, I didn'tget the image with a birch tree growing out of the diver's helmet. Thepiece is supposedly a riff on Russian nationalist fervor (the birch beingthe Russian state tree).Sometimes not getting the joke is the whole point. One drawing has a bigvodolaz, fat and happy under an umbrella during a rainstorm; twolittlevodolazes crouch up top, shivering as they get pelted. The caption,"The little Vodolaz up top is soaked through, but the big one underneathis as dry as can be," seems obvious enough. Turns out the duh-factor isintentional: Russians accept inequality unblinkingly. Class stratificationis as unremarkable as a weather report.Tishkov's images add up to a portrait of Russian society taken from adecidedly unflattering angle. The handful of divers sitting on rockslooking down at their feet while "Waiting for the Flood" might as well beexpecting Godot.These divers are good-natured, but weary and slumbering. Tishkov shows usa society making do with the oldest technology -- and drowsy from lack ofoxygen.

Vodolazes, at the District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW,Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 2-7 p.m.; Fridays-Saturdays, 2-10 p.m.,202-462-7833, to April 8.